Everything is stuffed, stowed and stored and we are ready to hit the road. As I have said previously, Clarke and I spent many nights talking about living on the road. We didn't have specific plans on where we were going, just heading east initially. One thing we didn't want to do was plan too far out and find ourselves having to hit deadlines. Our first year we only had a couple of places to be that had deadlines - we had promised my sister-in-law that we would be in Spokane the end of May to baby-sit her dogs, and we had decided to work at the Amazon distribution warehouse in Campbelsville, KY for the prime time from October through December.
We knew that we wanted to dry camp sometimes, so one of our first stops was to have two 150 watt solar panels installed on the coach. This enables us to stay off the grid if necessary. One thing I had been concerned about was staying in various business parking lots. We had stayed in Walmart and Cracker Barrel lots on a couple of occasions but I still as slightly uncomfortable about it. One thing I did early on was invest in an iPad. This lets me have email, Facebook, Internet, and my very favorite...books! We have found it an invaluable tool for checking out parking lots for overnight stays and also gas stations to make sure we can pull 62' into and out of them. I can look up the addresses, check out the area by satellite view, then street view. I have only missed badly once - the Savannah Welcome Center which Clarke detailed in a previous blog.
It took a few times staying in parking lots to where I am very comfortable now. I usually look up secondary sites in case, and have only had one Walmart so far that we didn't stay in. There are many sites on the Internet to help you find overnight stays. You can also look up Walmart "no overnight stays" and check Cracker Barrels for RV parking. I am so glad that we are traveling in the age of Internet and cell-phones.
Our stays have been varied. We have stayed in RV parks, parking lots and one of our favorites...courtesy parking. We have been very blessed with many friends and relatives around the country asking us to please visit and park in their driveways or in front of their houses. For those of you reading the blog THANK YOU!
Next up......what I have changed since the start....
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